


Solitude

by Dominatrix



Series: 120 Raindrops on the window [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt, Post A Scandal in Belgravia, Sherlock's feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dominatrix/pseuds/Dominatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irene may have taken away something from Sherlock with her when she left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitude

 John didn’t notice Sherlock’s changed behaviour the first few days.

Of course he recognised that Sherlock was quiet, spend more time in his room as it was usual and that he definitely thought...John wasn’t sure if Sherlock thought less or just slower.

He first realised how quiet it was when they were watching a horrible reality show on the TV and Sherlock hadn’t said anything for ten minutes. It wasn’t that Sherlock always talked; John had faced serious doubts when Sherlock hadn’t talked to him for a straight week while they had been solving the case of the aluminium crutch. But he had gotten used to it. Because somehow John had always felt that Sherlock was in fact talking. To himself. Silently. But John always knew that Sherlock thought, that he was considering various theories in his head faster than he could voice the thoughts, share them with John.

This time it was different. It was an uncomfortable silence. It was a quiet silence, a drowning silence, a silence that was only broken by Sherlock’s regular sighs or exclamations at the people on screen. John hadn’t actually known what Sherlock had meant when he had said that he wouldn’t talk for days sometimes and that this was the worst thing to know about him. John had always assumed that human body parts next to his dinner were worse than a silent Sherlock.

In fact, he had seen it as quite..relaxing when Sherlock just lay flat on the couch as if someone had placed him there, staring at the ceiling, thinking, sometimes silently moving his lips.

The silence now terrified John. He couldn’t really describe it but it was a horrid feeling of solitude next to Sherlock. There was nothing that told him Sherlock was still alive. He sat in the armchair, motionless, with hard, grey-blue eyes that seemed no longer like a thunder storm on sea but rather like a foggy November day in London. Unmoved. Flat. John feared – no, actually he knew – that the real storms were in Sherlock’s head. Each wave shattered Sherlock to the bone, John could see it in the tensing muscles of his jaw, the way the skin whitened at his knuckles when he balled his slender hands to fists.

He never lost a word about Irene Adler, or how her death...changed him. It was horrible to sit next to him, knowing that he could do nothing to take Sherlock’s pain away. He would have never assumed that Sherlock would be so taken by the death of her. By someone’s death. But he seemed completely traumatised.

The time in which Sherlock spent his days as a living corpse - not eating, not sleeping, barely talking, just scribbling on the note paper with such force that the paper ripped underneath his pen – seemed to last years, though in fact it was not even a week.

Even after the case had been closed, after Sherlock had believed the story about America and the witness program and everything else, John still wondered if Irene’s death, if only pretended, had left a mark on Sherlock.

And if it would ever heal.


End file.
